This is Part III of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State. You can listen to previous segments here.

Philip Giraldi joins us to discuss the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act-NDAA, the claim by the White House that it will only use this new power carefully and with due process, and contrasts that to the well-established trend of law enforcement and security agencies, which is to expand on powers granted, not to rein them in or limit them. He provides us with his assessment of the recent case of former CIA operative John Kiriakou, and discusses President Obama’s horrendous track record on civil liberties- broadening its definition of war powers, silencing critics and government whistleblowers through the repeated exploitation of the state-secrets privilege, abuses of National Security Letters, continuation of Guantanamo Prison, supporting numerous dubious terrorism prosecutions.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA and DIA counter-terrorism officer, member of the American Conservative Defense Alliance, and contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a regular column, Smoke & Mirrors, at Antiwar.com.

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Here is our guest Philip Giraldi unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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This is Part II of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State. You can listen to Part I here.

Coleen Rowley joins us to share her views and thoughts on the state of the misleadingly named ‘criminal justice system’ in the United States today, and the extent to which the apparatus has been transformed into a police state. She discusses the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the implications of this law for American citizens, and the troubling fact that many Americans are not aware of the serious threats to their liberties and rights posed by this police state enabling new law. Ms. Rowley talks about the Obama Administration’s increasing control of all information outlets together with the constant use of fear-hate-greed-false pride and blind loyalty propaganda to manufacture consent for the war machine as well as a panoply of other government-corporatocracy crimes, the escalating retaliation against government whistleblowers and government secrecy, FBI abuses and Director Mueller’s quietly extended term, and more!

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

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Here is our guest Coleen Rowley unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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This is Part I of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State.

Shahid Buttar joins us to discuss the continuous erosion of our civil liberties from illegal domestic surveillance to Guantanamo, NDAA and its discretionary detention provision authorizing the President to detain Americans accused by the government of supporting terrorism. Mr. Buttar talks about the many abuses committed by the unchecked Federal Bureau of Investigation, the extension of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Term quietly and readily by Congress, its significance and troubling implications, the capacity of the FBI to be used for political purposes established since the Hoover days, the US media’s silence on this significant issue, and more!

Shahid Buttar is the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution (PCC). He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he served as executive editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and as Professor Lawrence Lessig’s teaching assistant for Constitutional Law. In addition to his work leading BORDC, Shahid serves on the advisory bodies of the Rights Working Group, the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, and the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. He also supports populist constitutionalism as a civil rights lawyer, independent columnist, community organizer, and hip-hop and electronica MC. In his creative capacities as a poet and musician, Mr. Buttar has performed around the world, co-founded several grassroots art and culture groups around the country, facilitated workshops for young people and emerging artists.

Here is our guest Shahid Buttar unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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In the last few decades one never-changing modus operandi in our imperial pursuits and operations overseas has been the formation, financing, training, control and domination of our target countries’ military force. Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia … whether here right in our backyard under joint Pentagon and military industrial complex mega corporations or abroad, through our tentacles-NATO member nations, we’ve always ensured holding the most important string in ruling and managing our overseas puppetries- their military. Because, admit it, the figure-head dictators come and go; rise and fall; are made and destroyed, easily and frequently. On the other hand, their ruling military elite are more of a constant. Think Egypt: ‘Bye-bye Mubarak, stay put military regime.’ However, all that seems to be changing. We are getting savvier, more ambitious and far greedier. We want more: more control. Thus, welcome our new extended imperial sphere: Police Force a la USA.

According to the latest news, of course not covered by US media, our NATO Member Turkey will be training the new Libyan Police Force. Let’s read this extremely important new development with even more important implications [All Emphasis Mine]:

Turkey has started negotiations with Libya to begin training the country’s police force, which is being rebuilt after Libya’s violent revolution that began in February 2011 and ended the 42-year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi.

A delegation from the Turkish General Directorate of Security, headed by Deputy National Police Chief Ahmet Pek, traveled to the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Saturday to discuss projects related to Libyan police training in Turkey. The Turkish delegation considered the issue with Libyan Interior Affairs Minister Omar al-Hadravi on Sunday.

The meeting was also attended by high-ranking Libyan security officers. The officials talked about the resumption of Libyan police education, which was interrupted during the civil war, in Turkish police academies. They also discussed the possibility of including primary vocational training in the Libyan police force for former armed insurgents, in Turkey.

…

Pek stated that the Turkish delegation supplied necessary equipment for Libyan police forces during their recent visit and said they will be delivered to Libyan leaders during an official ceremony in Tripoli this week.

…

We all know about Turkey’s ‘water-bearer’ position for the West as an important and the only Muslim NATO member. However, what is not well-known here in the United States, thanks to its media’s complete submission to government, military mega corporations and foreign lobby powers, is Turkey’s internationally recognized status and fame for its atrocious police brutality and abuses.

In a damning report, Human Rights Watch said complaints against the police for excessive force had risen sharply since the start of last year while the number of officers convicted had dropped. A total of 3,339 people had complained about police ill-treatment in 2007, up from 2,854 the year before, but only 48 of those complaints had led to convictions.

The 80-page report, Closing Ranks Against Accountability, recounts numerous cases of suspects dying or suffering serious injury at the hands of police, sometimes after being stopped for routine identity checks. Police frequently cover up evidence while accused officers are routinely exonerated after internal disciplinary proceedings, the report says.

The rise in violent incidents was partly attributable, he said, to laws introduced by the governing Justice and Development party (AKP), which has built its image on a reform programme designed to aid Turkey’s EU membership bid. These include a law permitting police to use lethal force before it becomes a “last resort” necessary to prevent a threat to life, another allowing officers to conduct identity checks without reasonable grounds for suspicion, and anti-terrorism legislation enabling suspects to be detained for 24 hours without access to a lawyer.

…

Turkey has held on to its record as one of the world champions in extreme torture practices thanks to the direct financial and training support from its US masters:

When a harsh report asserting that torture is widespread in Turkey was released this week, the surprise was not just the amount of damning evidence it contained, but also the source. Rather than being prepared by a private advocacy group, the report was the work of the parliamentary committee on human rights.

For years, Turkish leaders have sought to play down accusations that torture is widely practiced here. That will be harder after what the parliamentary committee found. Its report contains transcripts of interviews with many prisoners who said they had been abused. It also includes photos of torture equipment and floor plans that show where torture cells are supposedly located in various police stations. No report by a government human rights body has ever been nearly this extensive or graphic.

Committee members and investigators interviewed more than 8,500 prisoners during a two-year period. They also conducted unannounced visits to 50 prisons and two dozen police stations, said the vice chairman, Sebgetullah Seydaoglu.

“This committee has existed for seven years but it hasn’t been functioning properly,” said Mr. Seydaoglu, who represents the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where the mostly Kurdish population has long complained of bad treatment by police. “In the last year we’ve become very decisive about our mission.”

…

Even Turkey’s financial and procedural backers in torture practices couldn’t help but admit to its status:

The United States State Department said in its latest human rights report that during 1999 “torture, beatings and other abuses by security forces remained widespread, at times resulting in deaths.”

Human rights advocates are unhappy with the government’s record. The bluntness of the new parliamentary report suggests that impatience for change is growing.”This report says what we have been saying for years, that torture is extensive and systematic in Turkey,” said Nazmi Gur, chairman of the Human Rights Association, which has often been at odds with the government. “This could be the beginning of progress toward meeting European legal standards.”

…

Maybe a few videos would better depict the Turkish police’s claim to fame:

Rather than filling many hundreds of pages with examples and reports I invite all readers to run a search for credible reports and documentations on Turkish police and its record on torture, violence and other brutalities.  This is the kind of police force and practices that have been deemed appropriate for the New Libya by US-NATO powers. The new trend has begun – we not only form, train, finance and command these nations’ military forces, but we now extend our ruling into their daily lives on the street via selecting, training, arming, financing, and controlling their police forces.

The United States has fulfilled its main objective on Libya: regime change; replacing it with its own regime, one that will be equally if not more brutal and abusive of its people. The only difference – the strings will be fully in its hand.

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Coleen Rowley was in DC last week, and I missed her visit again. She came all the way from Minneapolis to participate in the March on January 11and stand in solidarity with others who have not given up the fight- the vigilance; notwithstanding the frigid weather and the pouring rain. She drove all the way here, and then back. Because she is one of those people who doesn’t only talk-the-talk. This lady has always walked-the-walk. Whether in the fight for persecuted and prosecuted government whistleblowers, whether on our government’s  widely-practiced and now-normalized torture, illegal detainment, assassination practices, Coleen has always been there; notwithstanding all the odds that appear to be against us and all the defeats that we have been experiencing-back-to-back and nonstop. (She is in the picture-on the right)

Here are a few excerpts from a recent article she wrote on her march in DC last week:

It’s hard to know what to do, as mere citizens, to try and fix things so many years after the United States government decided it did not have to follow its own laws, the Geneva Conventions or the jus cogens torture prohibition. It’s now ten years after the indefinite detention prison of Guantanamo was created, an entire decade since the US went off the rails. With the recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act broadening and making permanent its “war on terror”, the US government seems to have given up on ever righting itself.

…

A country that cannot look back and learn from its mistakes is doomed to repeat its mistakes. Not surprisingly, torture memo author John Yoo is amongst those most vigorously urging the US to the “unavoidable challenge” of more war. Eerily similar to the lies and false hyping of Iraq’s WMD that led to an unjustified and catastrophic war, we find ourselves perched on the brink of watching a new war break out, this time on Iran. It will, in all likelihood, be a repeat of the destructive invasion of Iraq but many times worse not only in terms of the millions of people who could be killed in the Mid-east but also in terms of the potential blowback upon the United States and Israel. We could even experience the World War III that some neo-conservatives seem to long for.

And yet almost no one speaks out here in the U.S.! The Democrats have turned to war mongering almost to the same extent as the Republicans (with the exception of Ron Paul). Not only do most congresspersons and politicians of both parties give speeches in support of draconian sanctions (seen as war provocation) and stopping diplomacy, but they ultimately urge on this next war on Iran.

It seems the only thing we can do is get more ordinary citizens to take to the streets to demonstrate against war and torture.

…

You can read the entire piece here.

I feel terrible for not being able to make it there. I was less than 5 miles from the location, yet didn’t try hard enough to organize care for my toddler and join these activists. On the other hand, Coleen didn’t let many hundreds of miles of excruciating driving deter her. I salute you, Coleen. I always have.

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The office of the Director of National Intelligence announced last month that America’s civilian intelligence agencies appropriated a combined 54.6 billion dollars for classified operations this year, but he explicitly refused to provide any details of how the figure was divided up between America’s 16 non-uniformed intelligence agencies or what the money was appropriated for.

Intentionally and daringly withheld from the public is the amount of funds that the CIA has to use for its so-called “black operations,” or covert actions. What is the size of the CIA’s budget, and where is this money parked?

The question is even more difficult to answer than it first appears. Not only is there the issue of the funds that they receive in secret from Congress, and not only is there the ever-present question of how black operations use illegal methods to finance further illegal covert operations, there is also the question of the CIA literally setting up businesses, front companies, and shells, that function, from the outside, like any other business. Behind the scenes, however, these businesses are merely a place for the CIA to nest its covert operatives, and, potentially, to make and funnel money for their own purposes.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting well known and exposed facts, questions, and intrigues on the CIA’s front companies and its connections to the murky world of money laundering and shady financial institutions, to secretly and illegally fund their immoral black operations around the world.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here:

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

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What if this Halloween was exported to other parts of the world where horror and atrocities are woven into the people’s lives? What if this ritual was adopted by the children of the war-torn nations? What if these children who’ve been seeing, hearing and experiencing daily horrors and fear were to concoct their own Halloween characters? Would they solely rely on imaginary and made-up monsters and boogiemen, or would they designate real-life boogiemen as their Halloween characters and symbols?

I think the children of war-torn countries with mighty oil, or the kids in the nations on the mighty oil path, would not have to resort to a concocted, fictional and generic boogieman. You see, they have known, seen or heard of a real one. Their boogieman would have a name and a face. He’d be known for his ritualistic map combing, where he’d bend over a map, run his fingers over the page while humming:

 Eeny, meeny, mighty oil

Get that country by sheer force

If it fights back, fry by drone

Eeny, meeny, mighty oil

He’d keep humming until his finger, remotely controlled by the shadowy powers behind him, would come to a halt, on top of a nation- the chosen one for his coming round. If you happen to be one of the children in that nation …well, then may God help you; because no one else can.

The Boogieman with a name and a face would be coming after you with his man-less extension.

He’d be frying babies and mothers without having to hear the sound of their sizzling skin.

His man-less driven bombs would be hitting unknowing children at dinner tables or in bed.

Why man-less? Well, because it would take a certain type of man, a rare kind, to do it in person, to be able to stand the sound of those sizzling skins or the screams of the frying mother and her child, and keep doing it. But man-less is how it is done when a boogieman and a ruthless coward become one. And this kind of a coward boogieman with a face and a name is far scarier than any boogieman that can be concocted by any fiction. Just ask the children of the chosen Eeny- meeny- mighty oil nations. They’d tell you.

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Has it ever occurred to you that there seems to be no positive actions or accomplishments associated with this rogue-criminal agency? Really, think of one positive accomplishment or contribution by this well-funded and legitimized terrorist entity? We all know of the need and longing for praise and gloating when it comes to government agencies and bureaucrats. You would think that for every awful and scandalous incident that is leaked there would be several glorified and flowery ones. No? Come on; it’s human nature, and even more so, an inherently present government bureaucracy pattern.

I kept thinking, and thinking more, and tried hard to come up with one positive attribute of this rogue agency called the CIA. And I found one. Kind of. I think it is more appropriate to consider it an ‘unintended positive externality’ rather than a plain and straight forward positive. Well, here it is:

Let me start with a general concept as a framework. Are you familiar with the general concept of Penal Colonies? If not, here is a very general, macro definition: A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. I am going to use penal colonies just as a general concept since these colonies were designed and implemented for a wide range of purposes targeting an even wider range of people or groups as the colonies inhabitants, the prisoners.

Next, I want to briefly talk about the list of ‘desired qualifications’ for the CIA operative selection process. A few years ago one of my former CIA operative sources made the following comment:

“I truly owe it to the military and the CIA. Considering my background, a severely abusive childhood environment and later juvenile delinquencies, I was on my way to turn into a hard-core criminal. I stood before this fork: one led me to the extreme criminal path, and the other one turned me into a great soldier and even greater operative. Military re-channeled my criminal tendencies and rage, and later the CIA put those to noble and great uses through black operations overseas. When I kidnapped, killed, tortured…well, I did them all for my country and for the good of my own people. I owe them both.”

Now, the man above was one of several I have extensively interviewed on the top qualifications sought by the Agency in order to be accepted as operatives. The general list includes the following qualifications:

• Highly deceptive and manipulative
• Above Average Intelligence
• Pathological Liar
• Psychopathic tendencies
• Sociopathic tendencies
• Sadistic Tendencies
• Absence or low degree of conscience 
• Rage and Anger issues
• Abusive Childhood
• Moral Ambiguity

Well, you get the general picture, and I don’t have to bore you with the longer list of highly sought qualifications.

Back to the operative I quoted above. What went unsaid was this: I got to put all those criminal tendencies into action overseas, victimize people in other countries, and was told it was all for the good of my country. Oh, I was also given honor and a couple of medals for that.

Another way to say it, crudely that is: don’t sh.. where you eat. It is okay and actually honorable to commit those crimes elsewhere and victimize ‘others.’ But the same actions over here, at home, would land you in jail at best, and most likely in the electric chair.

Or say it this way: I came to this fork. One was to become a domestic criminal, the other was to become an international one sanctioned and legitimized by my government. I chose the latter and even got a medal or two for it.

How does all this tie into the semi positive externality and penal colonies concept?

The CIA has thousands of these operatives with ‘those’ sought after qualifications around the globe. Without the CIA these highly qualified sadistic, psychopathic, murdering and torturing criminals would have been here at home; right in our own backyard.

I am all with Ron Paul when it comes to dissolving this rogue criminal and terrorist agency. I also keep my realism hat on and accept the consequences of such a move. The moment the agency is dissolved, when the operatives come back home, we will see a phenomenal rise in our domestic hard and cruel crime rate: a astronomical jump in the number of serial murder victims, a huge increase in serial rape and torture cases, a vast increase in white collar crime involving con artists and charlatans … Basically, the penal colonies inhabitants would be coming ‘home.’

Still, despite all these negative consequences I would rather free our nation and the world of this dangerous rogue criminal terrorist agency. It is past time to stop treating the rest of the world as our penal colonies for our hard-core criminals.

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This is part II of our interview series based on the recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling.

Professor Stephen Soldz joins us to discuss the central role played by psychologists in the design and implementation of the US torture program, and how the American Psychological Association (APA) has protected this involvement by issuing the highly biased 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report). He points out the inherent bias in the Presidential Task Force membership, and cites other significant conflicts of interest by the Task Force’s unacknowledged participants. Dr. Soldz talks about the coalition of leading scholars and human rights groups from a range of fields who have joined together in spearheading a broad-based effort to annul and delegitimize the PENS Report as part of their joint effort to remove psychologists from torture and abusive interrogations.

Professor Stephen Soldz is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and public health researcher in Boston, and was a co-author of PHR’s report Experiments in Torture. He is the Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School, and has taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston College, and Boston University. For more information visit the website of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology here.

Here is our guest Stephen Soldz unplugged!

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Leading scholars and human rights groups from a range of fields – including psychology, medicine, law, military, and intelligence – have joined together in spearheading a broad-based effort to annul and delegitimize the American Psychological Association’s deeply flawed 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report). In a joint declaration the coalition states:

Despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.” With this stance, the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged- the “do no Harm” standard.

Further, the coalition points out the inherent bias in the Presidential Task Force membership, where six of the nine voting members were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies, and five having served in chains of command accused of prisoner abuses. The group cites other significant conflicts of interest by the Task Force’s unacknowledged participants, such as the spouse of a Guantánamo intelligence psychologist and several high-level lobbyists for the Department of Defense, and direct funding for psychologists by the CIA.

Professor Stephen Soldz, clinical psychologist and one of the coalition’s active leaders, had the following statement in an exclusive interview with Boiling Frogs Post:

“We now know that psychologists played a central role in design and implementation of the US torture program and the PENS Report was the crucial document that protected this involvement. Without the involvement of psychologists the torture program as we know it could not have gone forward. The PENS Report was a black mark for the profession of psychology and a devastating blow against human rights worldwide. We are calling on people from around the world – psychologists, other professionals, and ordinary citizens concerned with human rights – to join us in calling for the Report to be annulled as a step to ending torture everywhere.”

Professor Soldz is also one of the contributing authors in the recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling.

The Coalition has launched a petition calling for the annulment of the APA’s PENS Report as part of their joint effort to remove psychologists from torture and abusive interrogations. So far the list of prominent signatories includes more than 300 scholars, intelligence experts and activists. Here are a few names from the petition’s signatory list:

Philip Zimbardo, President, American Psychological Association (2002); Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

Leonard Rubenstein, Senior Scholar, Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (ret.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael Wessells, PhD, APA PENS Task Force Member, Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, Columbia University

Steven Reisner, PhD, Candidate for APA President; Clinical Assistant Professor, NYU Medical School; Faculty and Supervisor, International Trauma Studies Program, New York City

David DeBatto, former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraq war veteran

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights

Manfred Nowak, Professor for International Law and Human Rights, University of Vienna; Director, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights

David Remes, Appeal for Justice; Guantánamo habeas attorney since 2004

Nora Sveaass, UN Committee Against Torture; Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway

Sibel Edmonds, Founder & Director, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis FBI Legal Counsel

The petition is now open to the public. People are encouraged to visit the coalition’s website for more information and background, and sign the petition here.

*We just recorded an in depth interview with Professor Soldz. The interview will be published in two weeks as part of our new series on ‘CIA on Campus,’ based on a recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling. Here is a brief preview of our interview:

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13 articles. Thirteen hard-hitting well-written, thoroughly investigated, and unabashedly presented articles. Thirteen articles on abuses involving war(s), military, ‘generals’ games, prison and torture … You want to check it for yourself:Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

Then, I searched for Hersh’s article written during the current administration:

3 articles. Three articles. Only three articles since Mr. Obama’s presidential victory. That’s it. None of them on the scandals, issues and abuses of the Obama administration. None of them on Obama’s drone-mania. None of them on bombing and killing civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of them on the dubious brief assault in Yemen. None of them on Bagram torture-abuse-secret imprisonment. None of them on Libya. None of them on jailing Manning-DOD whistleblower or bringing criminal charges against other government whistleblowers. Instead of listing the long list of ‘Nones,’ I’ll give you the only three articles written by Hersh at the New Yorker:

Syria Calling: The Obama Administration’s Chance to Engage in a Middle East Peace- Published in April 2009.

Defending the Arsenal: In an Unstable Pakistan, can Nuclear Warheads be Kept Safe? – Published in November 2009.

The Online Threat: Should we be Worry about a Cyber War? - Published in November 2010.

You’d think the Obama administration’s incredible expansion of US covert wars would be right up Hersh’s alley, no?  How about the current covert war in Yemen with the silent mainstream? Do I need to mention the latest reports on US Drone-Bombing of Somalia?! Or maybe our latest shenanigans and inside-out/outside-in Pakistan relations and our nonstop drone attacks over there? I am sure you can come up with dozens of macro cases and scandals involving the current administration, the Pentagon and the CIA that ordinarily would be Hersh’s reporting territory. No?

Well, my article on Hersh’s troubling absence from the scene of the even more troubling American investigative journalism arena received a lot of attention; some good, and some very antagonistic. The ones who attacked me did so not on the merit of my report or the rationale and logic behind it, but for my daring to question Seymour Hersh the great, and this despite all the deserved credit I made sure I attributed to Mr. Hersh’s work in my commentary. Here is a quote from an e-mail I received immediately after the article’s publication:

Who the fu.. do you think you are to question and criticize Hersh? You are not even a journalist! The man has so gotten so many awards and is the best investigative journalist this country’s got. Shame on you…

In my commentary I neither claimed nor pretended to be a journalist nor had I in any way tried to look down upon anyone’s journalistic capability. I was being a very humble no-body who pointed to some hard data and facts and asked the obvious and logical questions. I was taught to question the questionable in life- not necessarily as an award-winning journalist or a decorated academic, but as a rational human being who uses her brain’s critical thinking function rather than following the trend of the majority and turning off that function.

Recently I came across a comment by one of our readers-Xicha at Boiling Frogs Post:

Sibel, do you still talk to Seymour? Is he still out to lunch?

Just a few weeks before that I received an e-mail inquiry from one of our readers asking me whether I knew anything about Hersh’s status. She ended her e-mail with the following comment and questions:

We need him so badly. What would it take to get Sy Hersh to investigate and expose these criminals, their wars and abuses? What can we do to get him to write again?!

At the time my immediate response was, ‘how should I know?!’ However, a couple of weeks later, the answer suddenly occurred to me! Bam, out of the blue! I got the answer, and I’m pretty confident of it. Not only that, I also have the solution to the problem. Here is my answer:

In order for Seymour Hersh to investigate and pour out those fabulously long and telling reports in pages after pages, nonstop, back-to-back, unrelenting and hard-hitting, a Republican president must occupy the White House. A Democrat won’t do; no matter how much of a Neocon he is, no matter how abusive and hawkish his practices, and no matter how aggressively he assaults people domestically and internationally.

As for the how can ‘one’ make this happen question:

I guess those people must do their share; go vote Republican and pray one gets the majority vote and gets into the White House. Once that happens they’ll get the good ole Hersh Feast in the New Yorker.

Now I will humbly seek your opinion and answer, and pass the microphone to you: what do ‘you’ think it would take to end Hersh’s hibernation cycle, get him to investigate, write and report again?

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Lorie Van Auken joins us and shares with us her reflections ten years on about the events of 9/11 and her loss. She discusses the still- classified 28 pages of the JICI dealing with terrorist financing, the 9/11 families’ stalled lawsuit to bankrupt the terrorists and the direct interventions by the White House to protect the Saudi regime against the justice-seeking families, and the many uninvestigated questions and facts covered up by the 9/11 commission. She questions our current many-fronted wars and the senselessness of the occupation of and our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan with Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden both dead, while our economy is crashing here at home. Ms. Van Auken talks about the three versions of the NORAD timeline, the passage of the Patriot Act as a vehicle to erode our civil liberties, NSA’s illegal wiretapping of our domestic communications under the guise of security, and more!

Lorie Van Auken, the mother of two children, lost her husband Kenneth Van Auken in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. She is one of the “Jersey Girls” who, along with Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza, fought the Bush administration for a commission to investigate the attacks. Ms. Van Auken is also a member of the September 11 Advocates.

Here is our guest Lorie Van Auken unplugged!

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On the other hand, by this very same definition, a criminal ‘hot case’ that has not gone through a proper investigation by real investigators remains a ‘hot case.’ Whether that hot case is shoved into a cold case file or not does not make it technically a ‘cold case.’ The never-investigated mass murder on September 11, 2001, a case never assigned to real and independent investigators, with many witnesses never-interviewed, with many suspects never-pursued, with many questions left unanswered, and with many leads never-followed, remains a ‘hot case.’ The self-serving classifications and redactions, the many cover ups, and the burial of the case and related files in government-created massive igloos, do not make 9/11 a cold case.

Let’s take a few minutes and by comparison examine a smaller scale murder investigation involving a murdered wealthy middle-aged man in an office building that was set on fire. While the forensic teams go over the body and through the charred building and debris to search for clues and evidence, the trained detectives begin interviewing witnesses, checking out the victim’s history, following any leads and forming their list of suspects.

In creating their list of suspects, the investigators look at all persons with direct or indirect motive(s): A young trophy wife with a multi-million dollar life insurance policy; a business adversary with much to gain from the elimination of the murder victim; former business partners and associates with grudges; a man who had actually threatened the murder victim; another who had shared his intense desire to see the victim dead; the owner of the handsomely insured burned down office building who had been unsuccessfully trying to sell the building and liquidate his assets …so on and so forth.

Whether through accounts of eye-witnesses or relatives, coworkers and friends, whether through documented evidence such as letters or e-mails, the investigators fill the list with possible suspects with motive(s) to see the victim dead, and maybe some with the established intent to kill him. Once the investigators create their list of suspects, and once the forensic and other evidence and witness statements have been gathered and analyzed, then they set about winnowing down the list. Using exhaustive interrogation techniques, investigative channels, and forensic evidence, the investigators begin eliminating unlikely suspects from the initial list one-by-one.

Sometimes the list is simultaneously narrowed down and expanded. While some initial suspects can be eliminated, others related to the initial suspects may be added as accessories to the crime. For example, the murder victim’s business adversary hired a professional hit organization that turned around and contracted the killing to three of its contract hit men. Or the victim’s wife’s lover plotted with her and engaged two hit men to execute the plot.

In the end, the investigators turn over their final suspect-accessory list and all the evidence that they believe will stand up in court to a prosecutor who then decides (on the evidence)  whether to bring charges against one or more suspects, and then argues the case in court. The suspect(s), motive, means and opportunity, all supported by evidence and witnesses, are presented in court for the jury to judge the case and decide guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Of course we then have those cases that never make it to court. The lack of sufficient evidence, witnesses, or even a lack of possible suspects, moves the case from the investigation phase directly into the cold case file cabinet.

Then, we have cases that never make it even to the real investigation phase. Period. Without going through the usual investigative process- evidence-gathering, witness interviews, seeking motives and means, looking for intent, establishing a list of suspects …Without turning over any suspect with ‘all’ associated evidence and witnesses to any prosecutor…These case are evasively declared closed or a cold case.

The investigation of the 9/11 mass murder was first assigned to a highly-influenced and dependent Congress. We are not talking seasoned detectives and investigative agents here. Then, it was given to a group of sleazy pocketed politicians called a commission. Again, we are not talking about experienced detectives and savvy and independent prosecutors. No; just a handful of masterful and deceitful politicians and their puppet administrative staff.

There never was a thorough initial list of suspects. A few hours after the mass murder a bearded man in some dark cave in Afghanistan was announced as the mastermind and less than a couple dozen dead hit-men were declared the executioners of that mass murder. As for motive and intent, there was a round or two of circular discussions in the media, but absent any real investigation and thus any need for real prosecution, establishing motive and intent were deemed irrelevant and unnecessary. Same for any accessory suspects; a few hundred were rounded up around the globe and were taken into black holes, black sites, and black prisons. Some were later released, some were tortured and killed, and some still remain in those holes. We don’t know, and it looks like we’ll never know.

In a real-life mass murder investigation by real investigators a document like this, explicitly stating the desire for a mass murder like this would immediately make its way into the evidence bag, and signatories such as these people with a real motive and unlimited means would be automatically added to the top of the investigators’ initial list of suspects. They would remain there until further investigated, eliminated, or possibly prosecuted. Of course this was not a real investigation, and with no real investigators, and there never was a real list of suspects.

In a real-life investigation highly suspicious suspects like this would not easily disappear into thin air just like that.

In a real-life investigation any suspect accessory like this would be investigated, interrogated, and accordingly cleared or apprehended. And other highly suspicious persons or possible witnesses like this would be questioned and examined very thoroughly, rather than being directly assisted in fleeing the country.

In a real-life investigation key witnesses and investigative experts like these would be held with the highest regard, and their knowledge, first-hand information, and documented evidence would be considered of great value. They certainly wouldn’t be censored, classified and officially gagged.

In a real-life investigation if the highest-level criminal investigative body declares the capriciously designated perpetrator only a ‘suspect’ with no real hard evidence ever linking him to the crime in question, the case would be categorized as ‘never-solved & so very much open.’

And the list goes on and on. When we get down to it, I mean really get down to it, what do we really have in the investigation of the biggest mass murder in the history of our nation? I’ll tell you what we have. We have a still ‘Hot Case’ that has been shoved inside a massive establishment-built igloo; so far, successfully.

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 I am not going to get into the ‘some’ reasons for this post; although, I have plenty to say on the subject. Instead, for the purpose of this piece, and for those audiences, I am going to answer the ‘whys.’ Why ‘some’ still question and seek answer(s) and accountability on 9/11.

Why 9/11? Because ‘they’ claim that’s what gives them the right to override our Constitution and all other laws guaranteeing our liberties and privacy.

Why 9/11? Because that’s what ‘they’ claim as justification for every one of our many wars.

Why 9/11? Because that’s what ‘they’ say is the reason for us having to be violated, humiliated, groped and fondled for the ‘privilege’ of travel.

Why 9/11? Because that’s when ‘they’ began the illegal eavesdropping of all our communications.

Why 9/11? Because that’s how ‘they’ legitimize excessive secrecy.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the excuse ‘they’ use to implement torture and severe human right violations and escape all liabilities.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the rationalization ‘they’ use to expand ‘their’ size and power.

Why 9/11? Because ‘they’ have successfully made it a means to justify many unjustifiable ends.

Why 9/11? Because that holds answers to many questions ‘they’ don’t want you to ask.

Why 9/11? Because that’s the question ‘they’ don’t want ever answered.

Why 9/11? Because maybe that is what ‘they’ really wanted.

Why 9/11? Because ‘they’ should not get away with it.

With all due respect to those who are still not satisfied with my answers to their ‘why’ question, we’ll be publishing articles, podcast interviews and investigative videos on 9/11 and related topics for the next few weeks…or maybe longer.  We hope to have those friends as an open-minded and critical thinking audience during our 9/11 coverage here at Boiling Frogs Post.

Sibel Edmonds

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For almost 10 years we have been engaged in a massive and many-fronted war advertised as a war on terror-war on Al Qaeda. Recent reports put the total cost to America of this war on terror at around $3 trillion. This is not counting un-countable covert operations with secret budgets, and it does not include the war in Libya or covert wars elsewhere.

For the last 10 years of the Cold War, the period of our heightened expenditures against a war marketed as a war against communism, we reportedly spent slightly under $3 trillion.

For a moment let’s forget about the exaggerated and sometimes dubious Soviet threats that were being sold to our nation during the Cold-War, and assume all of them legitimate and warranted. Okay?

We had the Soviet military with over 5 million men. We were dealing with Long-Range Ballistic Missile capabilities.  We had an empire with a declared arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons. We were faced with massive nuclear arsenals and warheads, sophisticated fighter aircraft, tanks… All that, and of course the added fear propaganda and jazzed up other threats to go with it. My point here is not how scary an adversary the USSR was to the United States. Here is what I want you to do:

Take into perspective and compare the size, budget, militaristic and technological capabilities, and the vast power of our former adversary, the USSR, to the current alleged terrorist adversary, Al Qaeda, whom we have supposedly been fighting for ten years.

Let’s first begin by engaging in a rational process of elimination, and take out the wars and targets that are not related to the 9/11 terrorists, the supposed Al-Qaeda. That will take out Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and also Libya and Gaddafi.

Next, we should take out Afghanistan as a terrorist nation state. Afghanistan has been under our occupation for almost ten years, and we have our puppet government installed there, and when it comes down to it, the Taliban does not equate to Al-Qaeda, it never did. The Taliban did not exercise terrorism in the United States or its Global territories.

We must also remove Pakistan as a terrorist country, thus a nation state target. If you remember, neither the quasi 9/11 Congressional Inquiry nor the quasi 9/11 Commission Report ever declared the Pakistani government/nation as terrorists or an Al-Qaeda member. Let us go with their official judgment. After all, haven’t we been giving Pakistan billions of dollars in US aid since 9/11 and continuing to date? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to on one hand categorize our drone war there as war against Pakistan as a member of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, and on the other hand support and finance them? Exactly; that eliminates Pakistan as an Al-Qaeda nation-government. Are you with me so far? What does this leave us with?

Our war on Al-Qaeda terror does not include a single nation state or organized state military. No military infrastructure or headquarters. No trained army-navy-air force. No tanks, warplanes, nuclear warheads, drones. No intelligence institutions or landmarks. No communication satellites. No technology. No borders. No GDP…

The supposed Al Qaeda’s top leadership was declared by our government to be Osama Bin Laden, aka Al Qaeda Commander in Chief; a sickly old man who was hooked to a dialysis machine; who supposedly lived and hid in caves, and later, in a mud house located in a remote third world village with chickens and goats. A man who sustained himself and his family by periodically selling his wives jewelry or bartering milk from his goats for occasional lamb chops. All this according to our own government; coming out in bits and pieces, and of course, sometimes in a totally contradictory fashion.

The supposed Al-Qaeda network’s communication and intelligence sharing infrastructure, according to our government, was kept very simple to evade our trillion-dollar intelligence institutions. The Al-Qaeda commander-in-Chief wrote down notes and instructions. He then waited for the courier to come and pick it up. The old man courier would hop on a donkey and travel from a bigger town to the Commander-in-Chief’s mud house in a third world village. This sometimes took several days. He’d take the note, then hop on his donkey, and go back to the town where he’d meet another intermediary courier. The intermediary courier would take the note to a nondescript little house, climb up to the roof where he kept trained courier pigeons and hawks, and based on the importance of the communication given to him, he’d either choose a hawk or pigeon to send the intelligence to the next courier. The next one used couriers who traveled to the remote deserts by camels, and so on and so forth.

How about the sophistication of weapons-methods used by our target terrorists, the ominous Al Qaeda? We are talking about a dozen or so pocket knives priced at approximately $4 a piece (probably made in China), and of course if bought in bulk, for a total under $40. That for the supposed execution of the massive terror plot over here, in the world’s super power nation. As for other worldwide terror incidents that have been placed under the  ‘Al Qaeda Track Record,’  we are talking about rudimentary bomb-making ability paired up with ultra simple bombs created by ingredients such as fertilizer; we are talking a few loads of cow dung here; literally, that is.

What about the size of the manpower these terrorists, Al-Qaeda, possess? Interestingly no one in our government has ever touched upon any scientific or even commonsensical estimate as to the number of active-combative Al-Qaeda terrorists. Instead, our government, through their stenographers in the media and their marketing arm in the Hollywood filmmaking industry, has succeeded in forming this public perception of a massive number of boogieman-Al Qaeda-terrorists out there who are actively and constantly planning and executing terror plots against the West.  Thus, to get a certain level of rational perception we must look at some factual indicators:

We have had this $3 trillion ‘War on Al Qaeda Terror’ for the last 10 years with nearly a quarter million military members, thousands and thousands of intelligence operatives and analysts, highly sophisticated and gigantic intelligence gathering tools (Think NSA, satellite technologies, wiretaps, spooks and snitches), mega rewards for turning in Al-Qaeda members …You’d think in ten years of these constant war and intelligence gathering operations we’d have tens of thousands of captured Al-Qaeda terrorists in our jails here and abroad. No?

Interestingly ‘No.’ Let’s take a look at the mother of all our captive top Al Qaeda terrorists detention center; Guantanamo Bay:

Since October 7, 2001, when began the war in Afghanistan, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo. Of these, most have been released without charge or transferred to facilities in their home countries. The Department of Defense often referred to these prisoners as the “worst of the worst”, but a 2003 memo by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says, “We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) with low-level enemy combatants … GTMO needs to serve as an [redacted] not a prison for Afghanistan.”

Currently we have less than 200 detainees at Guantanamo most of whom have not been proven guilty of being ‘Al Qaeda terrorists.’ Let’s be even more generous and count in those detained in other US military prisons like Bagram. Again, we are looking at 500 or so prisoners none of whom having ever been charged; none of whom legally found to be an Al Qaeda terrorist.

Now please put all these facts in perspective: Ten long years of continuous wars, trillions of dollars, 250,000 military personnel, trillions of dollars worth of intelligence gathering institutions and capabilities, millions of dollars set in rewards for Al Qaeda terrorists, and a supposed network with supposed  Al Qaeda active terrorist members in very large numbers. Yet we have less than 1000 detained who have been accused of being Al Qaeda terrorists, and none ever proven to be an active Al Qaeda terrorist member.

Does this make sense to you? Does it make sense as far as the trillions of dollars you have been made to pay for this? What are we talking about here? A massive never-ending war against a fantastical network of technologically and militaristically dwarfed terrorists whose proven guilty members we haven’t been able to catch or kill.

Everyone is busy arguing whether we should cut or add a few billion dollars to the several trillion dollars war on Al Qaeda. People keep talking about which country we should be getting out of, or, how many more countries we should get into to fight against terrorist Al Qaeda. No one is asking what Al Qaeda is or who really these supposed Al Qaeda terrorists are. The question that never seems to come up is exactly how big is this Al Qaeda we are spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives fighting against. I mean no one.

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BFP Nightly Quote

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”- President Woodrow Wilson

International Newsworthy

Edging Towards the  Partition of Libya?

Another Stinging Blow for the Libyan Rebellion

McCain Tells Libyan Rebels: End Abuses or Risk US Support

US Accuses Iran of “Secret Deal” with Al-Qaeda

Harrowing Exhibition Reveals Damage Done by Drones in Pakistan

Israelis Torture Palestinians with Impunity, similar to US Prisons

Palestinians Fear as Israel Destroying West Bank Water Sources

Turkey: Court Forbids Corruption-Busting Journalist from Writing

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National Newsworthy

Censorship of War Casualties in US

US Cannot Say How Many Had Communications Watched

Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal

First Presidential Campaign Finance Reports Show Clout of Wall Street, Retirees

White House Recruits IMF Communications Chief

Senate Extends FBI Director Mueller’s Term

Obama’s scare tactics to get Democrats to vote for his Republican Wall Street plan

TSA Readying New Behavior Detection Plan for Airport Checkpoints  

Lockheed Martin Wins $72,000,000 Contract to Install Body Scanners

DOD Full-Spectrum Cyberspace Budget Lunacy

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Noteworthy Editorials

The War on Libya: An Imperialist Project to Create Three Libyas

Obama Drug Policy: Yet another Broken Promise

Become a Conspiracy Realist

America’s Rural Ghost Towns

The “Towers of Basel”: The World’s Biggest Central Bank Has Private Shareholders

Disastrous Outcomes from an Orchestrated Economic Crisis

The Looting of America: The Federal Reserve Made $16 Trillion in Secret Loans to Bankster Friends & the Media is Ignoring the Eye-Popping Corruption that Has Been Uncovered

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BFP Nightly Funnies

“I think I know now why we are occupying Iraq. In case we have to sell America and move to a smaller country.” —Bill Maher

“Texas governor Rick Perry said God is calling on him to run for President. But Michele Bachmann said that God is calling on her to run for President. You know, if God is that indecisive, he’s probably for Mitt Romney.” —Jay Leno

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BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Video 1: Ferengi Discusses Earth Economics (Star Trek)

Video 2: Coal Lobby Warns Wind Farms May Blow Earth Off Orbit

Video 3: Ron Paul “What’s a Dollar?”

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Newsworthy

U.S. Blocks Oversight of its Mercenary Army in Iraq

Egypt Military Postpones First Post-Mubarak Elections

Inside DARPA’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine

General Zia Expresses Concern over Instability in Balochistan

Central Asia & Caucasus: A Look at Tactics Used by Cyber Censors

A New Epoch Beginning in the History of the Euro?

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US House Committee Saves Israeli Aid in Foreign Aid Cut

Financial Sectors Score Big Money for Obama Reelection

Murdoch’s Cash Lines Pockets of Members of Congress

Justice Department Trips in Anthrax Case- Again!

Next Army Chief Isn’t So Cool with a Smaller Force

New Study Proves Falsity of John Brennan’s Drone Claims

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Which Side of American Torture Are You On?

Hell-Bent on War

US Afghan Strategy: Senseless & Merciless

Former ‘Antiwar’ Leader Shills for Obama

End America’s Role as a Military Empire

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Video: The Founders Did Not Intend for the US to be Run by Big Banks & Wall Street

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I am going to start with a piece of news you all have already seen and read. I am listing this only because I will be posting a relevant commentary tomorrow, so here we go, starting with an article by Guardian:

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s assassination leaves gaping hole in Afghan politics 

Amid the confusion of breaking news reports following Ahmed Wali Karzai’s assassination, I mentioned the name of the alleged assassin, Sardar Mohammed, to someone close to the murdered man. The reaction was a gasp of disbelief.

Mohammed, who commanded a force of men who ran checkpoints close to Ahmed Wali’s hometown of Karz, had worked for the Karzai family for years and was from the same Popolzai tribe and district. The fact that he was allowed to bring his weapon into Ahmed Wali’s presence shows just how trusted he was. It seems likely that there was a personal motivation behind the attack, despite the Taliban claim of responsibility. Kandahar is a hotbed of long-running personal vendettas.

Isaf [the International Security Assistance Force) now has a chance to push for more inclusive politics in Kandahar, if it is sufficiently deft and willing to engage directly with those Ahmed Wali had marginalised. But his death leaves a massive hole in the fabric of Kandahari power politics, and shows the dangers inherent in a strategy that relies on individual powerbrokers.

Ahmed Wali was the linchpin of the south’s pro-Karzai network, a pan-tribal alliance brought together by money and mutual security. There is now no clear successor to Ahmed Wali, and certainly no one who can combine his vast financial influence, iron-fisted methods and closeness to the president. …More 

The following article will give you a better idea on who Ahmed Wali Karzai really was:

Afghan CIA Drug Kingpin Shot Dead by Own Bodyguard

Ahmad Wali Karzai, the half brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards Tuesday morning. Friend and trusted head of security Sardar Mohammed shot him in the head and chest. Mohammed was in turn shot and killed by fellow bodyguards. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assassination.

In 2009 it was reported that Karzai was a major player in the Afghan opium trade. According to reports, other members of the Karzai family are involved “head-to-heels” in the drug business.

Ahmad Wali Karzai also worked for the CIA.

“The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years,” a former intelligence official told Newsmax in 2002. “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA.” … More

You’ll have my comments on this tomorrow. Until then, as far as Ahmed Wali Karzai goes.

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Another great article by Pepe Escobar on Pakistan:

Pakistan ‘punished’ in Pipelineistan

Before the end of 2011, Pakistan will start working on its stretch of the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline – according to Asim Hussain, Pakistan’s federal minister for petroleum and natural resources. The 1,092 kilometers of pipeline on the Iranian side are already in place.More

IP, also known as “the peace pipeline”, was originally IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India). Although it badly needs gas for its economic expansion, faced with immense pressure by the George W Bush – and then Barack Obama – administrations, India still has not committed to the project, even after a nearly miraculous agreement for its construction was initialed in 2008. …

And this one from Afghanistan front:

US Moves Toward Afghan Guerilla War

The United States is beginning an interesting new dimension to the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgency efforts will be complemented by an expanded unconventional warfare campaign in many insurgent-controlled areas. This change in approach may have a considerable impact on the stalemate and hasten meaningful negotiations.More 

The US is training scores of Special Forces teams to infiltrate into and operate in areas that the Taliban and other insurgent forces have gained control of in the past few years. Such operations have been in effect for a few years now, but the program is enjoying greater support. Many recently retired special forces personnel …

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Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?

Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America’s rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don’t see it that way.

They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.

These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen – and since last month in Somalia - should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are either unable to or unwilling to fight the militants operating from their territories.

They are precise, limited, strikes aimed at taking down specific individuals, and in that sense are more like the police going after criminals, rather than a full-on military assault. Ricks writes: 

“Police work involves small arms used precisely. Drones aren’t pistols, but firing one Hellfire at a Land Rover is more like a police action than it is like a large-scale military offensive with artillery barrages, armored columns, and infantry assaults.” … More

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 American Jew refused entry to Israel on suspicion of converting to Islam

With regard to a young American Jew named Harald Fuller-Bennett, the Taglit-Birthright project to some extent achieved its goal. The project brings young Jews from around the world for a trip in Israel “in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people,” to quote its own words. And indeed, about two years after coming on a Taglit-Birthright tour, Fuller-Bennett intended to visit Israel again.

But this time, the people working to diminish the distance between him and Israel were two Tel Aviv lawyers, Omer Shatz and Iftach Cohen, and Jerusalem District Court Judge Yoram Noam. Together, they overturned a bizarre attempt by the Shin Bet security service to accuse him of having connections with terrorists and intending to convert to Islam – for which reasons it barred him from entering Israel for 10 years.

Fuller-Bennett is now 30 years old. On his Taglit-Birthright tour in January 2008, he said, “I gained a lot of sympathy for Israelis and for the multitude of challenges they face (and the many mistakes the government is currently making in facing them ). We had a number of engaging Israeli military members on our bus. I am still Facebook friends with some of them. My conversations with them taught me much about the complexity of modern Israel, and the difficulty of being born into a state with a siege mentality.”

Fuller-Bennett joined a group within the Taglit program called “Peace, Pluralism and Social Justice.” He is not certain that this subgroup of Taglit is still active, but the fact of its existence shows the organizers recognized that there are young Jews whose interest in Israel has not eliminated their capacity for criticism. “We had questions about Israel but wanted to see for ourselves,” Fuller-Bennett said. … More

Israel withheld video evidence of Rachel Corrie’s killing, says her father Craig

The family of Rachel Corrie, the US activist killed in Gaza while protesting against house demolitions in 2003, on Monday claimed the Israeli military authorities withheld video evidence during the Corries’ civil lawsuit and misled US officials on crucial details.

Craig Corrie, Rachel’s father, told a press conference in Jerusalem that the footage from a surveillance camera near the scene of his daughter’s death submitted to the court was “incomplete”. Additional video material obtained by the family showed Rachel’s body in a different spot to the place identified by some military commanders, he said. He also alleged that the Israeli military had misled US officials on the position of Rachel’s body when she was killed. … More

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Here is an interesting commentary on media:

Empire and the Criminalization of the Media: The Fourth Estate is Bankrupt

From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth imperialism was the dominant national ideology, transcending class and party divisions. Britain was saturated in the ethos and attitudes of empire. They infused plays and books and, later, films. They informed school textbooks. They inspired paintings, prints and engravings. They filled newspapers and magazines. They figured in advertisements and packaging. The impact was arguably greater than that of any previous dominant ideology because its pre-eminence coincided with the rise of the mass market and the mass media. – ‘Imperialism and juvenile literature’ edited By Jeffrey Richards. Manchester University Press, 1989

So what’s changed? Not much really. Today of course, the ideology of imperial expansion now masks itself as ‘humanitarian intervention’ or ‘democracy-building’.

Our Victorian ancestors were less coy about colonizing, claiming to be on a ‘civilizing mission’. But ‘civilizing’ the Libyans, the Iraqis or the Afghans would be a step too far in these allegedly politically correct times but it’s the same thing by another name.

Yet the abyssmal failings of Western ‘democracy’ are all around us. We have governments that regardless that an ‘opposition’ exists are effectively one-party states and have been ever since the early years of the 20th century. …More

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And finally an excellent video report by our partner James Corbett for Global Research.ca on Drone Wars:

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Here are two news articles on Pakistan-US relations (While reading the following recall my related article here on Bin-Laden Death Script):

Pakistan Seeking Even Closer Ties with China 

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s increasingly “close and effective defense ties” established with China during the past decade will allow Islamabad to “fill the gap” arising from the prospect of reduced military aid from the United States, a senior Pakistani official said on Sunday after reports emerged of cuts of up to $800 million in U.S. aid.

Amid tense relations with the United States, Pakistan officials have increasingly pointed towards Beijing as the country’s natural ally, offering the possibility of becoming at least a half-substitute to ties with the US. … More 

Pakistan Defiant as U.S. Cuts off $800 Million in Military Aid

The Obama administration leaks critical stories on a seemingly daily basis to the American press, which riles Pakistani public and official opinion against the United States. Many in Pakistan believe that there is a concerted American effort to weakened Pakistan and its armed forces, among the largest in the world.

“The U.S. can’t decide they if they want to stay in this relationship or cut Pakistan off,” said Cyril Almeida, a columnist with Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper. “And Pakistan needs to work out whether it wants to be on the wrong side of international opinion and on the wrong side of the U.S.”

Since 2001, the U.S. has provided $21 billion in civilian and military assistance to Pakistan, including $4.5 billion in the 2010-2011, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service. Two bills in Congress over the last week, which were voted down, would have cut off aid to Pakistan altogether. …More

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I guess it is time for the administration to step up the Iran propaganda … again; here is what I mean:

Top al-Qaida Ranks Keep Footholds in Iran

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On a cold March morning last year, an Iranian diplomat was flown home nearly 15 months after being kidnapped by gunmen in an ambush on the Pakistani side of the Khyber Pass.

Iran hailed the release as a victory for its intelligence agents, who they claimed staged a rescue mission into the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Western officials and others saw it differently: A turning point in Iran’s dealings with al-Qaida.

Negotiations to free the captive diplomat are believed to have reached high-level al-Qaida figures, Western officials say. In return for its help, al-Qaida demanded better conditions for dozens of people close to Osama bin Laden who have been held under tight security in Iran, including some of the terror chief’s children and the network’s most senior military strategist Saif al-Adel. …More

US concerned about Iran arming Iraq militants-Panetta

(Reuters) – Leon Panetta, on his first visit to Iraq as U.S. defense secretary, said on Monday the United States is concerned about Iran providing weapons to Iraq militants and will take unilateral action when needed to deal with the threat.

“We are very concerned about Iran and the weapons they are providing to extremists here in Iraq. And we’re seeing the results of that,” Panetta said. “In June we lost a hell of a lot of Americans as a result of those attacks. And we cannot just simply stand back and allow this to continue to happen …”

Iran threatens to attack Iraq-based Kurdish rebels

(Reuters) – Iran threatened Monday to take military action against the Iraq-based Kurdish rebel group PJAK, saying the head of Iraq’s Kurdistan region had handed the group land without telling the government in Baghdad.

A senior Iranian military official accused Masoud Barzani, the Kurdistan president, of “giving 300,000 hectares of land to the PJAK terrorist group without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad,” the semi-official Fars news agency said. …More

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Noteworthy Editorials

Two Million Dead- Now what’s That South Sudan Independence About?

The New York Times produced a nice article the other day covering Independence Day in the new country of South Sudan. It mentioned all kinds of things, from the dignitaries who attended the ceremony, the history of warring that resulted in two million deaths, the continued threat from multiple insurgencies, the religious differences that divided the South from the North of Sudan (North: Muslim, South: Christian and Animist), the hellish heat dogging the festivities. It even noted that the new president wore his signature black cowboy hat, a gift from George W. Bush, and that someone in the crowd held up a sign reading, “Thank You George Bush.”

Just one teensy thing it nearly skipped: oil.

You have to wait, kid you not, 24 paragraphs (including after the hat-tip to Bush) to get this gem—which itself was nicely nestled in the midst of other sentences:

And relations with the north are still dicey. Negotiators have yet to agree on a formula to split the revenue from the south’s oilfields, which have kept the economies of both southern and northern Sudan afloat.

The key point is buried, and then buried again, and made to sound obscure. But make no mistake about the significance. Sudan is the third-largest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa. Or, should we say was. Because 85 percent of that oil came from the south. …More

The Business of America is War

Noted trends analyst Gerald Celente said it, and it’s true. In fact, America’s business is war, more war, multiple wars, permanent wars, pillaging one nation after another for wealth, power, and dominance, while homeland needs go begging.

America never was and isn’t now the “land of the free and home of the brave.” In fact, it’s become a “Let ‘em eat cake” society.

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The empire never sleeps or tolerates anti-war activism, threatening its quest for unchallengeable “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.

September 11, 2001 served as pretext to consolidate power, destroy civil liberties and human rights, and wage permanent wars against invented enemies for global dominance over world markets, resources, and cheap labor – notably at home and throughout … More

Torture Whitewash

How convenient is it that a door shuts on the Bush administration’s global program of extraordinary rendition and torture, just as America’s military-industrial complex plays musical chairs — with Republican holdover Robert Gates leaving as defense secretary, to be replaced by Leon Panetta, who has spent the last two years as the director of the CIA, while Gen. David Petraeus, the military commander in Afghanistan, takes over Panetta’s role at the CIA?

The answer has to be that it would be hard to conceive of a neater example of how the military and the intelligence agencies — or the CIA, at least — are at the very heart of government. …More

Col. Travers: Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children shows that it does not seek peace

Today I talked to Col. Desmond Travers, a member of the Goldstone mission on the Gaza conflict, who lives in the Republic of Ireland, about the Israeli treatment of children in the occupied territories.

Col. Travers: If the British had behaved toward children who threw stones at them in the manner that is the norm on the West Bank for the Israeli security forces– whereby children are rounded up in the evening and taken to places of detention, hooded, beaten, and in some cases tortured– the northern Ireland problem would not be resolved today. It would still be a place of conflagration.

Why is that? … More

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And here is a video clip on a recent Fethullah Gulen coverage by FOX News. I guess the MSM has started the nibbling process:

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The media spent the first two days of Bin Laden’s Death hailing and saluting the greatness of the Obama presidency. Bit by bit the White House PR script writers fed them Tom Clancy inspired bylines, each new bit more glorified than the previous one. Hollywood must be working on movies as I’m typing this post. Do they have to get any specific rights for this particular manuscript? Or is it considered free for all public info? Anyhow, now we are entering Chapter Two, Set Two, or Stage Two. Time to shine the spotlight on the other players: CIA Special Forces and maybe a few private contractors collectively known as Secret Kidnapping Torturers. You see, according to ‘ANONYMOUS’ government and White House sources, we have those black sites, the torturers and the brutal torture tactics to thank for Bin Laden’s action and mystery filled death and disappearance (aka secret burial at sea).

Obama’s buddy, his unofficial press secretary and favorite fundraiser, and the new queen of the AOL PR machine, has just released the second chapter of the Clancy-like manuscript-Glory, Glory Hallelujah, the Black Site Torturers Keep Marching on[emphasis are mine]:

In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden’s couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.

One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida’s operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.

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The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

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As for Huffington’s wonderful source citation, journalistic work, we have the following declaration which says it all:

Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.

…Story continues below

I am going to place one of my famous bets again. I bet you no one will ever go after these particular anonymous sources from our intelligence agencies. You see, they are disclosing what they are told to disclose, and it wouldn’t make the tiniest difference how classified or sensitive the intentionally leaked information is. When the government has a PR mission and a polished script to go with it, releasing all sorts of ‘classified or sensitive’ intelligence is kosher. But may God help those who release information classified to cover up government criminality such as NSA illegal wiretapping.

Please go and read this Clancy-Like novella chapter at Huffington Post. Pay special attention to anonymous sourcing and glorified kidnap-torture methods meant to program unknowing Americans: Torture, assassination, illegal operations are all good when the end justifies the means. Hail to President Bush for starting those programs, and hail to President Obama for continuing them!!

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I go on line and check out the major newspaper headlines, and to my delight there is a TSA related headline or two in every one. In the last few days two in every three e-mails I’ve received (and I receive hundreds a day) carry TSA related heads up or action items in their subject lines. The blogosphere has been simmering with the same outrageous issue. Yet the entire thing gives me pause. A long one. The pattern, the order, the intensity, the lingo, the reaction…all remind me of something or some things. It is a bit, maybe more than a bit, like a sense of déjà vu. The feeling that we’ve been here; more than once, actually many times. Make that too many times. I keep thinking of a yoyo. In fact, I can’t get the image of a yoyo out of my head. I am asking myself, and you, the following question: Are we Americans exhibiting yoyo-like and short-lived reactions? In short-lived jerky motions?

Let’s step back for a second and take a look at this consistent pattern:

NSA illegal wiretapping of American citizens is exposed. We, some of us, are outraged. We can’t stop reading about it. We write about, talk about it, and blog about it nonstop. For a while. The media waits a little, then takes the cue, decides to ride the same wave, however selectively and reluctantly. For a while. The Congress follows the fashion. They are into fashion. They wear this particular fashion like a Halloween costume, over the top of their usual long-term clothing, with every intention of shedding it off at the end of the parade, as soon as it is announced out-of-fashion.

Within a few weeks the media goes back to ‘normal,’ and acts as if ‘it’ never happened, or, it happened but no longer carries newsworthiness since ‘it’ has become another ordinary fact of life to live with and forget it is even there. The Congress likes to remain fashionable. When the media stops, the costume is out-of-fashion; to be discarded. Their usual clothing underneath are ‘classics,’ politically that is, the kind that never go out of fashion, politically, that is. So they go back to the good old classics until the next fashion trend breaks in the news. During this phase, we the people gradually stop reading, talking, writing, and blogging about ‘it.’ We are exhausted from over-excitement. Frankly, we are bored with the topic. For weeks we all had run in the same direction; fast and furious. Everyone within our circle had covered the same ‘topic,’ and the topic started getting too familiar, too common, too ordinary, too tedious and too massive to go against. All in a very short time, but nonetheless.

…and this when the next ‘scandalous’ issue hits. Hooray! We have another scandal and another cause; another outrage. Maybe it is torture, and thousands of documented pictures and reports to go along with it; all committed in our name and with our money. Maybe it is the FBI raiding peaceful protestors’ homes for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Maybe it is major intentional falsifications of facts to drag us all into another war, where we spend billions, kill, and get killed for some made-up cause enriching a few cause-makers. Maybe it is the TSA fondling, groping, and pretty much raping we the people on a daily basis for some made-up, perceived secuity.

No matter what the ‘current,’ or, ‘fashionable,’ or ‘newsworthy’ cause, scandal, or issue, we run back and forth like yoyos, run towards the ‘new cause,’ hold on to it for a short-while, repeat the above steps with the media taking up the trend and Congress sporting the fashion, blogs fuming collectively… basically going around the same circle, completing the same short-lived cycle, then eventually we retreat, and after that, another case of major violation or abuse breaks or gains momentum, we run towards it, pose to confront and challenge it, write-talk-blog about it…

You do see the yoyo I am talking about here, don’t you? What happened to our outrage, a handful of posturing lawsuits, and relentless pledges declared in the face of being illegally wiretapped and spied upon? How long has it been since we found out and became outraged, signed on to hundreds of petitions against it, bombarded the ‘fashionable’ representatives with mails-e-mails and calls? How long has it been since we’ve seen it covered in bold by our media? How long has it been since we’ve heard it discussed or even referred to by those elected as ‘an issue’ or ‘problem’? Here is the most important question of all:

How long has it been since we have either acknowledged or consciously thought about the fact that we are actively, unconstitutionally, and belligerently under surveillance by our government and their plentiful contractors and collaborators?

Please don’t take me wrong. I stand by my word in the introduction section of this article. I am truly delighted by what I see in terms of movements in reaction to TSA’s raping of our rights and dignity. It is just that I see this particular abuse-violation as one of many symptoms of our broken system, suspended Constitution, and a corrupt and abusive system of No-Checks & Many-Imbalances. The real diseases are not getting much, if any, attention. And we the people seem to be inflicted by a chronic case of a symptoms-chasing yoyo syndrome. It is way past time to look to curing and rehabilitating ourselves from this freedom-threatening syndrome, and go after the real diseases and causes.
 

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Coleen Rowley shares with us her views on the latest spectacle surrounding the Christmas Day foiled terrorist attempt, and how it reflects on policies that were implemented after 9/11. She provides us with insight into the pretend investigations carried out by the 9/11 Commission, and how they conducted many of their interviews of FBI witnesses and experts inside the FBI HQ and offices. Ms. Rowley talks about the absence of real investigations and accountability in almost any government related wrong doing and issues, our shameful treatment of inmates in Guantanamo detention center, the alarming desensitization of our people bolstered by the culprit mainstream media, and much more.

Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.